Public gets first look at Stroudsburg school's preliminary budget

Stroudsburg Area School District officials introduced their preliminary 2013-14 budget on Wednesday.

CHRISTINA TATU

Stroudsburg Area School District officials introduced their preliminary 2013-14 budget on Wednesday.

School officials have stressed the budget is just a rough draft that will show the state what it would cost to run the district as it currently is.

The proposed budget would increase from $96 million in 2012-13 to $98.9 million in 2013-14.

The budget also includes a $3.1 million deficit. That deficit includes $950,000 carried over from the current year, and another $2.1 million due to the district's increasing retirement and health contributions.

The proposed budget increases taxes by 5.95 mills, about a 3 percent tax increase, in order to cover the projected deficit.

The school board cannot and would not raise taxes by that much, however, said Don Jennings, the district's business manager.

Based on a district's enrollment and population size, the state sets a cap on how much taxes can be raised each year.

Stroudsburg's cap is set at 2.2 percent, Jennings said.

"This is not what the board is planning to do. We are just letting the state know this is what we would have to do in order to run things just the way we did," he said.

The school district faced a $10 million deficit last year, requiring them to eliminate nearly 50 teaching positions as well as transportation, custodial staff and professionals.

They also eliminated driver's education and increased class sizes.

Board members will have to make more cuts going into 2013-14 in order to cover the projected $3.1 million deficit, Jennings said.

What exactly would be cut is still being discussed by the board members, he said.

Wednesday's vote was simply to make the proposed budget available to the public.

The preliminary budget won't be approved by the board until the Feb. 20 meeting.

The final budget won't be adopted until June.

Copies of the budget are available on the school district website: http://www.stroudsburgsd.org/sasd-main-page-5.html